Of Bludgeons and Innovation

Yesterday, I got an email from the White House's propaganda wing, signed by O.  In it, he trumpets the fact that insurance companies "... will be required to spend at least 80 percent of the health insurance premiums you pay on your health care, instead of overhead costs like advertising and executive compensation."

The dolt, and the other dolts up there, seem to believe that these two things are unnecessary to the proper conduct of business.  He stopped short of saying that reform is meant to eliminate profits at insurance companies, but truly, that is the intent.  Since forever, insurance companies spent about 65% of revenues on payouts, using the other 35% for operating the business, so O has more or less appropriated 15% of the insurance companies' revenue.  (Hmmmm....is that an illegal taking?  Probably not, but it is, in effect.)

O's version of health care reform, if it goes fully into effect, will ultimately destroy our health care industry.  We will be left with a system of primary care with little capacity to meet higher level needs and will be bereft of innovation.  It will eventually be used to bludgeon us into compliance, just as TSA is being used right now.  The level of innovation will be governed by that engine of innovation that is our federal government.  You know, the organization that gave us the Post Office, the IRS, the government procurement process, the TSA and the EPA, among others.

Thanks, Senator Hagan!

Senator Hagan:

Thank you so much for the "Carolina Connection Special Edition: Health Care Facts" newsletter that you sent out earlier this evening.  Since I wrote you several times during the debate over the Health Insurance Reform bill, I appreciate seeing an update from you.  I know that you worked hard to put this together.  Alas, I see that you have called your newsletter "...Health Care Facts" when in fact, it appears to be largely about Health Insurance.  Well, except for the flu shots.

I thought that I would provide you with some additional information that Mssrs. Emanuel and Axelrod may not have provided to you.  In fact, I have reproduced your newsletter below and you will see my responses in blue.

Carolina Connection Special Edition: Health Care Facts newsletter begins:

In March 2010, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act

and the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act

became law. So much information is circulating about health care reform, and sorting through it can be overwhelming and frustrating. This newsletter will help explain what the law does and what it means for you and your family. Other useful information about health care reform can be found atwww.healthreform.gov

.

Starting in the First Six Months...

• Insurers are prohibited from dropping coverage when you get sick.  Sounds great!  How will that affect premium costs? 
• Children with preexisting conditions will not be barred from coverage.  Excellent, I'm OK with this in principle, but again, how will this affect costs?  My expectation is that the insurers will estimate the added cost of a known condition and have no choice but to price it into their policies.
• Young adults up to age 26 can stay on their parents' plans.  As a father, I appreciate the sentiment, but I would prefer that my daughter learn to provide for herself.
• No more lifetime caps on coverage.  Well, this can only drive costs up.  You just invited the whole country to an all-you-can-eat buffet.  I will make a further projection; costs will rise rapidly to extract as much revenue as possible in as short a time as possible.
• Seniors hitting the "donut hole" will receive a $250 check.  Well, OK, the whole donut hole thing was dumb, anyway.  But why a check?  Why not just close the hole?  Why add the administrative cost of cutting a check for several million people?
• Eligible small business owners can receive a tax credit to help pay for health insurance premiums. I have a better idea:  cut taxes permanently in stead of "allowing" business owners to get a credit.  To a small business, cash flow is king and you are forcing small businesses to flow the cash out up to 16 months before they get the credit back.  That's called negative cash flow.  Why not a tax cut, which would create positive cash flow?

Middle Class Families

For middle class families, reform means:

• Tax credits will be available for almost one million North Carolinians to make health insurance more affordable. Again, I would rather have a permanent tax cut, not a deferred tax credit.  Cash flow is important to families, too.
• As many as 2.3 million children in NC will no longer be denied coverage because of a preexisting condition.  Who pays for that?
• Preventive care services, including well-child visits and annual flu shots, will be available at no extra cost.  OK, I'm calling an intentional foul here.  "At no extra cost"?  How do you provide all that for 2.3 million without incurring extra cost?  Will the doctors and vaccine makers simply donate their goods and services?  Somebody, somewhere will have to pay for that.  Who do you think that will be?  I deem this an intentional foul because I think you know that but you are waiving that phrase in front of less-careful readers.  After all, 24% of Americans think that "the government has money on its own without using taxpayer money".  See column here

  for source.  You are playing those people for suckers by saying "no extra cost".

Click here

to read more about the benefits for North Carolina's hardworking families.

Seniors

For NC seniors, the new law means:

• 247,000 NC seniors in the prescription drug "donut hole" will receive a $250 check this year.  See previous.
• The donut hole will be incrementally closed over the next several years until it is completely closed by 2020.  See previous, though this will also increase cost.  Still, the donut hole was silly to begin with.
• 1.4 million NC Medicare beneficiaries will have annual wellness visits and preventive services at no extra cost.  AAARRRGGGHHHH!  There you go again!

Click here

to learn more about the benefits for North Carolina's seniors.

Small Businesses

• Over 120,235 NC small businesses are eligible for tax credits to make premiums more affordable. Businesses won't have to choose between providing insurance and cutting jobs.  Wrong.  We need permanent tax CUTS, not credits, for cash flow reasons.  Worse, these credits phase out with the 26th employee.  The marginal cost for that 26th employee will be so great, that companies will be very hesitant to get much bigger than 20-24 employees.  Here, look at this short paper

  (PDF) for an excellent summary of this effect.

Click here

to read about how the new law will support small business owners.

Health Care Reform and NC Job Growth

• By slowing the health care cost growth rate and allowing businesses to expand employment, researchers anticipate that NC will benefit from as many as 7,100 - 11,400 new jobs per year over the next ten years.  Well, that isn't very many in a state of nearly 10 million.  No less an expert than Fed chairman Ben Bernanke testifying before Congress on April 14 said that job growth will be "slack"

  for years.  And then there is this, from CNN, headlined "Say Goodbye to Full Time Jobs with Benefits"

  .

For more information about how the law improves care and reduces costs, click here

.

Hagan Accomplishments

Senator Hagan included the following provisions in the new law:

• Rural Physicians Pipeline Act to address the shortage of primary care doctors in rural communities.  Good luck, hope it works.  But since I read that many doctors are choosing to get out of the business, I wonder where we will find the doctors we will need to treat the extra 30 million people that will be put on the plan.
• Catalyst to Better Diabetes Care Act to move toward reducing the diabetes epidemic. Exercise and diet.
• Medication Therapy Management Program (MTM) to save money and help seniors better follow their medication regimens.  Sorry, don't know what this one is.  Are we going to have someone visiting people and checking on their medication regimens?  Really?
• An amendment with Republican Senators Mike Enzi (R-WY) and Orrin Hatch (R-UT) to create a regulatory pathway for generic biologics.  Token Republican mention here all the way at the very end of the newsletter.

Senator Hagan, going through this little exercise has really clarified for me something that I knew all along and it is this:  Neither you nor the rest of the Democrats in Washington gave any thought at all on how to pay for this thing.  You have unleashed the law of unintended consequences in a very big way on our country and the effects of this will be with us for decades.  Right now, Canada is looking into ways to move to a more market/consumer driven model.  Britain's health care service is spewing red ink faster than the Deepwater oil well.  The Congressional Budget Office now points out that the bill will NOT hold costs down.  I refer you to the blog of the Director of the CBO, found here.

  It would have been nice to know this before you voted for the bill, don't you think?

See you at the ballot box!

DaveyNC

Me and the Dingbats

 

I regularly go to the Huffington Post and comment on various articles. A conservative is guaranteed an exchange of comments there whereas, if you comment on a more conservative site, you may get one or two “True dats”.  Much more engaging to joust with the other side.  It usually results in me being called “uncaring” and other names.

Yesterday, there was a post there about AT&T taking a $1,000,000,000.00 charge to pay for Obamacare and as you would expect, HuffPo readers just think that is awful of that big, evil company to do that and to warn that some cuts in benefits or people would have to happen in order to adjust to this new reality.  (I covered this below.)  I went there and pointed out to them a point that I have made there before:  It’s fine to aspire to European-style healthcare, but they need to be prepared to live with a European-style economy; permanently higher unemployment, social stratification, etc.  My comments begin here.

So I found this nifty little website that nicely summarizes various statistics for any country that publishes stats, www.indexmundi.com .  Here is how the US unemployment rate compares to France, Italy, Canada and that paragon of Liberal pining, Sweden.  I’m using 2007 as my comparison because my argument is based on historic rates of unemployment, not current and because that was the last full year before the global meltdown began.  You know, back in the good ol’ days.

2007 Unemployment Rates, the evil US vs. Socialist Nirvana

US=4.8%.

Sweden=5.6%, 14.3% higher than the US.

Canada=6.4%, 25% higher than the US.

Italy=7%, 31.4% higher than the US.

France=8.7%, 44.8% higher than the US.

The US’s current rate is about 9.7%, my home state of North Carolina is over 11%.  Prior to the meltdown, NC hovered around 4-5%, but the losses in the finance business have really hurt us, particularly Charlotte, our biggest city.  My guess is that if this ever straightens out, the nationwide number will settle somewhere around 6-8% on a permanent basis.  We will become Canada or Italy.

Waxie and Stupie

 

Henry Waxman and Bart Stupak have ordered Randall Stephenson, the Chairman, President and CEO of AT&T to appear before the House Committee on Energy and Commerce to explain why AT&T announced that they will take a $1 billion (that’s $1,000,000,000) charge against earnings to pay for their precious baby, Obamacare.

Now, whenever Waxman is involved, you can’t discount the likelihood that this is a veiled threat and an invitation for him to launch invective through his enormous, upturned nostrils at someone. 

 

But if you read the letter Waxie and Stupie sent, it almost reads like they are surprised at AT&T’s action.  Like they never thought this could happen.  It reads to me like they they never heard of the difference between static analysis and dynamic analysis; that is, static assumes that nothing else changes in the data set while dynamic attempts to account for all possibilities.  Or, as it is more commonly known, “The Law of Unintended Consequences”, a term that seems to have first occurred to these two dopes for the very first time in this letter.

Beginning with the third paragraph of this letter, let’s look at just how stupid these two are:

 

• That first sentence in the third paragraph is our first clue of their stupidity.  They talked themselves into believing this turd would lower costs for companies. 
• The second sentence is where they begin to question AT&T’s own analysis, disbelieving that AT&T knows its own numbers and how changes in the law will affect them.  Waxie and Stupie don’t name the independent analyses that they are referring to, but I’m betting none of those looked specifically at AT&T.  Probably just looked at a broad swath of fake numbers. 
• The third sentence points out that the CBO projects a 3% decrease in average premium costs by 2016, conveniently leaving out what will happen in the intervening five years and implying that AT&T should keep their costs artificially high in the interim while awaiting this earth-shattering savings that is headed their way.  I also would be willing to guess that, if the CBO projected a savings, they said that the decrease will be 3% less than it would have been without it.  That is, not 3% less than it is now but 3% less than the normally-expected increase would have been.  Waxie and Stupie aren’t thinking dynamically here, they are assuming that everything else stays the same, nor do they or the CBO have the slightest clue about what other business expenses AT&T anticipates coming their way.  For instance, AT&T is in a notoriously capital-intensive business, requiring a huge annual investment in upgrading their network to accommodate the Jesus Phone for the millions of hipsters who voted for Obama. 
• Finally, the last sentence in this paragraph points out that the Business Roundtable “asserted…that health care reform could reduce predicted health insurance cost trends…”.  Emphasis mine.  Woulda, coulda, shoulda, douchebags.  Ideology, meet the real world.  This statement also suggests that maybe the Business Roundtable was looking at the data dynamically when they used the c-word, but Waxie and Stupie chose to only take into account what they wanted to hear.  Had the Roundtable said that it would reduce costs, that would point to static analysis.  But they didn’t say that; they are business people and are well acquainted with the Law of Unintended Consequences.

The second page of the letter is where the threat is issued.  “Give us a data dump for our accountants to dive into and then send us everybody with a title above Vice President for all of your subsidiaries.”  This, too, displays the idiocy of these two morons.  AT&T has 281,000 employees and who knows how many subsidiaries.  I hope AT&T rounds up the hundreds of VPs that they must have and sends them all to this hearing.  It would be a great display of just how big the economy is and how little Waxie and Stupie understand about what they and the Dems are screwing around with.  But the business cost of doing that would be prohibitive, especially with the Dems yanking cash out of their company as fast as they can.

Powerline speculates that companies didn’t mention these repercussions sooner for fear of being retaliated against.  But companies are thinking dynamically, knowing that whatever Congress does they can adjust.  To a point.  It’s the dumbasses like the Dems who think that whatever they do doesn’t otherwise affect the economy.  When companies unload people over this, the CEOs will be vilified by the Left, but all they are doing is responding rationally, something the Left is entirely unable to do. 

My own opinion?  We will all soon be independent contractors and off the payroll.

Vote ‘em Out

 

Here is your list of Socialists.

Bastards.

I Blame Tom Delay

 

And, to a lesser degree, Newt Gingrich.  And W.  And Trent f’n Lott.  Damn them, it is their fault that we are about to flip socialist. 

Why these guys?  It all started with this, Delay’s “K Street Strategy”.  This is where the fiscal irresponsibilty, corruption and appearances of corruption began.  The K Street Strategy, in a nutshell, consisted of Delay twisting the arms of the K Street lobbying firms to send the vast majority of their money to Republicans and to even remove Left-leaning lobbyists from their positions and replace them with more Right-leaning types.  In return, the lobbyists and their clients got what they wanted.  It was vote-buying in it’s most bald-faced form; a scorched-earth strategy and the earth has been fucking scorched to shit right now.

This strategy led to a surfeit of money in Republican coffers and then to assholes like Ted f’n Stevens and his goddamned Bridge to Nowhere.  And it was this effect that so thoroughly discredited them as fiscal conservatives to the point that we elected a Socialist and allowed the even more Socialist Pelosi, Waxman, Markey and so on to take the reins of government.

The article linked above appeared in the Washington Post, co-written by David Maraniss and Michael Weisskopf in 1995.  They were never more prophetic than when they wrote this, emphasis added:

“Yet money is also the source of increasing tension among House Republicans that could ultimately weaken them, if not tear them apart. The conflict, in essence, is between ideology and populist reform. One wing wants to collect as much corporate money as possible to sustain and expand the revolution. Another wing fears that this will disillusion voters who brought the Republicans to power to change the traditional ways of doing business in Washington. Gingrich stands in the middle aware, people around him say, that his tenure could depend in part on his ability to resolve the conflict.”

Newt, Newt, Newt.  You blew it.  If you saw the tension here and let it go unimpeded, you laid the groundwork for yours and America’s demise.  All those Lefty nutbags back then hated you because they thought that you would ruin the country, and they were right for the wrong reason.  The country is about to take a road that it cannot return from.  The nutbags wouldn’t be orgasming today over Obama had you simply put your foot down on this activity and set the tone then that Republicans should hew to the principles of fiscal conservatism that is so important to conservative voters.  And then along came W with an allergy to the veto pen and here we are.

Folks, it’s gonna be a long, slow descent into European-style malaise.  We get to watch China, Asia and Brazil take center stage on the world now. 

Watch now, once this crap passes on Sunday, as hiring by private companies goes nowhere.  Companies have been waiting to see what would happen with this and other bills and the only conclusion they can come to now is that their costs are going to permanently and unalterably increase.  No CEO in his right mind would take on added costs in this environment.  Get ready for permanent 10 to 12% unemployment.  We won’t have jobs, but we’ll have health care.

I wonder if I can get my congressman to put provisions for nutrient ingestion in the bill?

AP Games

 

Earlier today, I looked at Drudge and saw a headline about Warren Buffett and his comments on the effects of health care on the American economy.  At least that is what the headline on the AP/Yahoo! story said this morning:

 

I no longer have the story as written originally, but I remember that it was generally favorable to the reform that is currently on the table. 

So, later I see this story from Politico:

 

This is from the same interview that was on CNBC this morning.  So, after I see the Politico story, I go looking for the AP story.  I started at Drudge, but the headline was gone.  Then, I dig through the web history of my browser and find it and click through to the story, and here is what I find:

 

Oops!  If you read the Politico story, they really emphasize the harsh comments (well, as harsh as Buffett ever gets) that Buffett had for the current plan.  The AP story, on the other hand, buries the health care comments deep in the story and really limits the amount of reporting on the health care comments that Buffett made.  Again, I wish that I had the original story from this morning from AP; it would be really interesting to compare that story to the newer Politico version.  Regardless, I smell bias.

Here’s What Obama Wants for us….

 

….just heartbreaking.

 

 

This is how health care rationing works.  Some bureaucrat, our wonderful Governor in this case, has to save a few bucks and it is people like the Mabrys that suffer for the incompetence.  Some years ago, the state decided that a great way to save money would be to get out of the mental health care business.  Sort of.  You see, they decided that it was absolutely necessary that they retain some control over the system, so they just held the purse strings while outsourcing treatment to private providers.  I’m all for the private operators providing care, but the state has terribly mismanaged the whole process.  The whole system functions sort of like Medicaid, with the state paying for treatment in amounts they deem appropriate.  It doesn’t work.  There are constant backlogs, people can’t get service and many simply walk away.  The state insists on oversight of the care of these people and apparently, oversight includes not providing services when it is inconvenient for them.

It looks like Obama’s health care plan is dead, or at least on its last legs.  I truly hope that someone soon, I don’t care who or which party, takes up reform again in the very near future and fixes the whole mess.  A big first step in fixing it will be getting the government all the fuck the way out of it.

Maoist Fashion [UPDATED]

 

This is too easy, sometimes.  Here is a photo of White House Senior Advisor Valerie Jarrett that landed in my inbox this morning from Politico. (article here)  Is that a Mao jacket she is wearing?

 

Pretty close.  Here is the original:

 

Does anybody really know what Jarrett does?  Her title is Senior Advisor.  So, what is her area of expertise?  I know she’s President Obama’s best buddy, blah, blah, blah.  But what, exactly, is she good at?  Military affairs?  Economic matters?  Education?  Union relations?  O originally wanted her to be in his cabinet (Can’t remember what for.  Health and Human Services?), but that didn’t fly so now she is in the kitchen cabinet.

Read the opening two paragraphs from the Politico piece:

“White House senior adviser Valerie Jarrett vowed that President Barack Obama will keep up his aggressive outreach to the business community, even as the president steps up his attacks against irresponsible players on Wall Street and in the insurance industry.

“Business is really not a partisan issue,” Jarrett said in an interview for POLITICO’s new video series, “Inside Obama’s Washington.” “What I hear from the business community all the time is that they want a strong economy. That’s a goal that the president shares. They want to create the kind of environment in this country where they feel secure about investing and building for the future, and that’s completely consistent with the president’s objective to create jobs.”

Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0110/31805.html#ixzz0djCXQhqf “

President Obama is making an “aggressive outreach” to the business community?  He disparages business at every opportunity.  A recent poll showed that 77% of investors view him as anti-business.  He wants “to create the kind of environment in this country where they feel secure about investing and building for the future, and that’s completely consistent with the president’s objective to create jobs.”?  Really?  Really, Valerie?  OK, let me help you.  This afternoon, have the President make the following announcement.  He will probably need the teleprompter so he doesn’t choke on the words:

“In view of the continued economic strains the country is under, I have decided to suspend pursuit of health care reform.  Also, I will be putting on hold any further discussion on the cap and trade bill.  I recognize that businesses view these initiatives as additional costs and until we determine that businesses can absorb these additional costs, we will halt our efforts.”

His all-important popularity will soar, markets will rise and businesses will pick up the pace.  Try it, Valerie, you’ll like it.

UPDATE:  So I went back to trash the article out of my inbox and got another look at the headline that came in with the picture and it struck me as funny to see that picture of Jarrett with this headline:

 

Mao nationalized private business in China. She wants us to believe that she, and Obama, understand how to support business.  My ass.

How to Fix Healthcare With a Healthy Dose of Capitalism

A personal story:  Back in about 2002, my now ex-wife and I were both out of work and thus out of health insurance.  She developed bursitis in her shoulder, a problem that she had had once many years before.  She lived with it for a while, but eventually she couldn’t bear the pain any longer and needed medical attention.  She knew from her previous experience that a cortisone shot would clear it right up, so I set about finding a doctor that would do the job for a reasonable charge.

I started calling doctors in our little town and the story was pretty much the same from all of them; $200 deposit, x-rays, treatment, office charge, etc.  Most of them could not readily give me a price; they didn’t know it but eventually I got numbers and they all came in between $800 and $1000.  All we wanted was the cortisone shot; she knew what was wrong and what would fix it.  We didn’t want x-rays or any of the other crap they were all talking about.

Finally, I found a doctor (and actually got to speak directly to him!), explained our situation and what we needed and he agreed to give her the cortisone for $120.
That is how markets work; a buyer shops for what they need and finds it at a price that is suitable and the deal is done.  In one hour on the phone, I knocked the price down by hundred’s of dollars.  Think what would happen if we all did that every time we needed medical attention.

She got the shot and in short order was as good as new.  Pretty damn simple, if the assholes in Washington would just get out of the way and let it happen.

The Pelosi/Reid Deception

 

The deception is that their proposed health care plan will begin collecting taxes in 2010 but not provide any benefits until 2014, despite the urgent pleas that we have to do something right now because Americans are hurting!  This will go unnoticed by the vast majority of American people; all they will understand is that the bill passed and now they don’t have to hear any more about it.  The depth of the deception is made clear by this chart that I stumbled across here (click to embiggen):

 

 

The timing of the increases is no accident.  There is no increase at all in 2010, during the Congressional midterm elections.  There is no significant increase in 2012, when Obama stands for reelection.  There is a huge acceleration in 2014, half way into Obama’s 2nd term (if there is one) but things really get cranked up in 2016 as Obama enters the home stretch of his final term in office.  Presumably, he will be leaving a mess for his successor to clean up, since this whole plan and its ridiculous cost virtually assures a stagnant economy and job market for the foreseeable future.

I really don’t know what they are thinking.  I wish just one of the three, Pelosi, Reid or Obama, had ever met a payroll so that they could understand what they are doing to us.  For a good example of what these government imposed higher costs do to a small business (hell, to any business), read this article that the AP ran yesterday.  This is how Atlas shrugs:

 

• Chuck Ferrar, who owns a liquor store in Annapolis, Md., expects to pay $9,000 in unemployment taxes next year, up from $3,000 this year. Health care costs for his employees will rise by $8,000, or 17.5 percent. "When you start adding this up, it turns into real money," he said. "If I lose an employee through attrition, I will not replace him. You can't afford to do it."

• Sam Schlosser, owner of Plymouth Foundry Inc. in Plymouth, Ind., said his unemployment tax bill could double next year. Revenue at the family-owned company, which makes iron castings for machine parts, has fallen about 50 percent, he said. In case of higher taxes, his company may have to consider layoffs, he said.

• Marjorie Feldman-Wood, president of Al's Beverages in East Windsor, Conn., which makes soda fountain syrup, said higher taxes would make pay raises less likely. Connecticut is borrowing from the federal government, and employers fear the state will have to raise taxes soon to repay the loan. "There's only so much money at the end of the day," she said.

Callous children.

We Are Sucking Hind Teat to the Boomers Once Again

Health care reform, in keeping with politicians propensity to pick favored constituencies at the expense of others, is purely a pander to the Baby Boomers.  We have a giant glob, 77 million of them, of Boomers that are currently retiring and just in time comes His Wonderfulness to offer to them health care for the rest of their days.

Technically, I am a boomer.  The Baby Boom ran from about 1949 to 1964 and I was born towards the end of that time frame, but the biggest chunk of them were born and came of age in the early to mid-60’s when I was just a kid.  Realistically, I have spent my whole life picking up the leavings of the goddamn Boomers.  They hold the best jobs, they will get the full measure of their Social Security benefits, they sucked up all the market capital then destroyed several trillion dollars’ worth of it and now they are poised to help themselves to 20 years’ more time of perpetuating their scorched earth lifestyles.  They will roar through the system, taking everything with them and leaving a mess in their wake.  And if you don’t believe that, take a look at the current value of your home.  If you are under the age of 50, think about whether or not you will see your Social Security benefits sliced before you retire, in favor of maintaining benefits for those who are about to retire or have already retired.  Think about the current value of your 401(k)’s and how long it will take to recover, if ever.  Think about working until the day you die.

So, we must fight the health care proposal and cap and trade and bailouts and demand the shrinking of the federal government.  If I’m tilting at windmills here, so be it.  But if you are under the age of 50, you better think about storming the gates of Congress.

A Modest Proposal

Here is a proposal, to send a message to the bastards.  Here is a link to IRS form W4.  For January of 2010, under-withhold your taxes.  In fact, fill out the form so that you have exactly zero taxes withheld for the month of January.  You can do this by claiming 10 or 12 dependents and little, if anything will be withheld.  Then, in February, change your withholding again to your normal rate, plus the amount you would have normally withheld in January, spread over the remaining 11 months of the year.  Let’s send a message to the dirtbags up there that we have had enough.  The only thing they want out of the producers of this world is money; take it away.  It’s the only way we will ever get their attention.  Don’t get your asses arrested; pay your taxes, but let’s put a little hitch in the cash flow up there.  Atlas needs to shrug a little.

Spread the word; if you don’t, who will?

New World Record for Congress!

Newly-elected Congressman from New York's 23rd district, has surely set a record for screwing his constituents over.  He broke 4 campaign promises in his first hour in office.  Just stunning; these guys really don't think that they work for us.  (Link is a little iffy; their server is getting hammered right now since the story is referenced on Drudge.)

If memory serves, this was a special election with about a year left in the term, so the possibility exists that the Dems put this guy up solely to cast his vote in favor of the PelosiCare bill and, if it gets to a vote, cap and trade.

More on Republicare…

…from Hot Air, the CBO has now scored the Republican plan and it looks very reasonable and worth pursuing.

“Their plan, which relies on interstate competition, HSAs, and tort reform, would only cost $61 billion in the first ten years of the plan — or slightly less than 6% of what Democrats plan to spend to overhaul the entire system…”

Makes so much sense, using existing concepts instead of trying to create something new out of whole cloth.

Republicans Health Plan Alternative

Haven’t had a chance to go through it, but if this article from Breitbart is correct, I like what is in the bill.  They should have offered this plan sooner and more publicly, maybe in the brief reply they had following President Obama’s prime time speech on health care.  (And has anybody noticed that the prime time speeches have dropped off significantly?)
Heh.

Click on image to enlarge

Here is What Healthcare Will Be Like Under ObamaPelosiReidCare

Via Slate:

Assembly line medicine, coming to a clinic near you!

And now for some full grown bastards.....

Just announced; the Dems have cleared the way to pass the health care bill via budget reconciliation.  In other words, after a summer of shouting at them and telling them we don't want it, they are going to ram it down our throats anyway.  This is not the way that a representative democracy is supposed to work.  The bastards work for us, not for themselves.

Ameroflot?

Uh, no to this.

A Public Option Airline would be a nightmare when coupled with our antiquated public option air traffic control system.  We'd all be flying in biplanes, with one ticket counter for the whole airport.

"Public Option Airlines".  Fly POA, otherwise known as "Piece Of Assness" airlines.

Real World Results Don't Matter

Politicians in general and Obama in particular don't let real world results affect their decisions.  In fact, the Left seems to believe that they can somehow centralize and handle our needs better than the Soviets did or better than the European socialist countries have just as the Right is convinced that unfettered free markets will always produce the desired results.  (And I am in the unfettered category; it's never been tried, though and never will be.)

Case in point:  Wendy Button, and her experience with attempting to obtain health insurance after relocation from Washington DC to Massachusetts.   The so-called "free" health insurance that she must purchase as required by RomneyCare is far more expensive than what she paid in DC.  And this is the problem that Obama's requirements for reform will cause.  He insists that pre-existing conditions not be allowed.  This means that the insurance companies have no choice but to price for the recurrence of possibly high cost health problems.  Price goes up.  Obama wants there to be no caps on coverage.  Price goes up.  Obama wants every single person covered but makes no changes to tort law or to break down competitive barriers across state lines.  Price goes up.

So we can have everything that The One wants to "give" us.  We just need to be prepared to pay more for our "gift".  He's not creating competition, He's driving costs up with one set of actions and attempting to lower them with another set of actions.  We should expect nothing more from a man who has spent his entire life in the Ivory Tower and has little real-world understanding of what it takes to run a business.

In Which, While in my Underwear, I Critique a Nobel Prize Winner

Paul Krugman, in today's New York Times laments the absence of Richard Nixon in the White House today rather than the current office holder.

"But the Nixon era was a time in which leading figures in both parties were capable of speaking rationally about policy, and in which policy decisions weren’t as warped by corporate cash as they are now. America is a better country in many ways than it was 35 years ago, but our political system’s ability to deal with real problems has been degraded to such an extent that I sometimes wonder whether the country is still governable."

So, what was that era of American politics really like? It was a time when the Democrats had been in power for so long that the Republican party had acclimated so thoroughly to being the minority party that they mounted no real challenge to the Democrats in the House and the Senate. Instead, they sought to pick up a few crumbs here and there that the Democrats tossed their way after funding things like, oh, I don't know-the ultra successful War on Poverty. Republicans in that era weren't so much an opposition party as they were inside players, skilled at greasing the skids in order to maintain their own access to the public coffers. They didn't challenge the Democrats in either philosophy or the execution of that philosophy. So Krugsie laments the loss of a time when Republicans were compliant and easily manipulated with a few bread crumbs.

When you hear Krugman and others on the Left decry the lack of civility and bipartisanship in politics today, what they are really moaning about is that the Dems can't roll the Reps any more. Hell, they can't even roll the Blue Dog Dems any more. Somewhere along the line over the last 30 years, conservatives and libertarians found their voice and formed a clear understanding of those beliefs. And because these beliefs are principle-based, not desire based, they don't yield. In short, the Krugmans of the world can't stand the fact that the conservative side of the country dug in its heels and started to push back. For me personally, this crystallization of thought began about 3 years after I got out of college, in the time of Reagan.

Read this passage from Krugman:

"Right now, Republicans are balking at the idea of requiring that large employers offer health insurance to their workers;"

I don't know of anyone who is balking at that idea. In fact, many people in this health care debate would like to see employer-based health care come to an end. Further, the market for employees already dictates that large employers provide health insurance. It's a ludicrous statement for Krugman to make.

And then Krugman gets it completely wrong:

"So what happened to the days when a Republican president could sound so nonideological, and offer such a reasonable proposal?

Part of the answer is that the right-wing fringe, which has always been around — as an article by the historian Rick Perlstein puts it, “crazy is a pre-existing condition” — has now, in effect, taken over one of our two major parties."

How condescending. What an ass. The disagreement over health care reform, or health insurance reform, isn't based on a reasonable proposal from the Democrats. What the Democrats are proposing isn't reasonable to people who have a firm belief that health care, and the responsibility for it, is better left to the people who need it and the people who provide it. The socialist Left is dumbfounded that people wouldn't want a government provided program for everything (see "What's Wrong With Kansas"). The conservative/libertarian right is dumbfounded that some people believe the government should be their Sugar Daddy and parcel out everything we need to live.

Obamacare is a dangerous expansion of government, period. Neither I nor any clear-thinking person can see the benefit of that, never mind the anti-competitive nature of it. We simply can't see the wisdom or benefit in turning over so large a component of the private sector to the government. The socialist Left is seriously misjudging the anger being shown at town hall meetings these days. Obama and the crew are trying to ram something through with little if any debate or discussion. Elected representatives stand in front of these town hall meetings and read talking points designed to sell the plan rather than talking substantively about the bill at hand. People see this and quite rightly they go ballistic.

The hell of it is, there is quite a lot of agreement between the two sides about health care and, I believe, a real willingness to fix it. But when the party in power tries to shove something down our throats, we fight back. Areas of agreement include:

• Health care costs too much
• We should eliminate employer-provided health care. We need true portability.
• We don't like having either insurance companies or the government between us and our doctors
• Medical providers need relief from the administrative nightmare they face every day
• The ultimate responsibility for one's health resides with the individual. People need to eat properly and get enough exercise. We should do more to encourage the acceptance of this responsibility.
• Pre-existing conditions should be more limited in scope. The other side of this double-edged sword is that insurers will price for recent conditions, as they should. My ex-wife was recently denied coverage because the insurer thought that she had had a sprained knee within the last 30 days. A sprained knee. (She appealed and got the coverage.)

I am a big believer in the use of Health Savings Accounts coupled with major medical coverage. John Mackey, CEO of Whole Foods recently wrote about how his company uses these to control costs and places more responsibility in the hands of his employees and he was excoriated by his Volvo-driving, tofu-chewing customers. He was accused of being anti-healthcare reform, which was ludicrous. He just didn't care for Obamacare and has a workable, proven alternative. Since the Whole Foods plan works, there is no chance that Obama, Krugman or any of the fringe Left will adopt any of its methods.

Krugman goes on to whine about corporate lobbying in Congress. Blah, blah, blah.

So, I propose a compromise for health care. The socialist Left is bent on a giveaway, so let's do this. The government just handed as much as $4500 to everybody who purchased one of the government's preferred automobiles. Let's declare the Whole Foods plan to be the government's preferred plan, eliminate employer-provided health care and then give everyone $5000 (the annual limit) in a Health Savings Account. And then let the market do what it does best, wring the fat out of the market. This compromise would satisfy the right's desire to make the health care market function more like a free market and would satisfy the left's burning desire to give other people's money away.

Nah, better not. It might work.